Monthly Archives November 2013

“Leave Me Alone!”, said the camera to the actor. And who can blame the poor camera. The actor’s always clamoring for it’s attention: “Look at me, look at me. Love me. Want me. Hey, watch what I can do.” It’s gotta be like babysitting a five-year old. I don’t know how the camera does it. Must be completely exhausting. And, sure, the camera tolerates it. It has to. Goes with the territory. But it doesn’t like it. It doesn’t want to have to babysit the actor. It would much rather have a grown up relationship with the actor. A little giveRead More

God. Now there was an actor. Oh, sure, he could have created human beings just following an anatomy chart, in the way most actors create the scene just following the plot the writer wrote. But if there’s one thing God knows, it’s the camera’s not interested in the plot, it’s interested in the story. Creating the plot’s like a painter painting by numbers. They may get the picture right but how interesting is it going to be? And if a hundred painters paint by numbers the same picture, how are we going to tell any of them apart? And ifRead More

Thank God the gold rush wasn’t led by a bunch of actors. Sure, they’d have had all the right equipment and the most stylish mining clothes but when it came to the actual mining for gold, they’d have gathered up whatever nuggets were already scattered on the ground in front of them and called it a day. But all the really good stuff’s not on the surface. It’s the same with their scenes. Give an actor a scene and they immediately start mining it for whatever nuggets the writer put on the page. But any good writer will tell youRead More